~ 💎 WEEKLY POWER GOALS 💎🔥 60→1ch | 100→2ch | 200→5ch ⏰ Resets Monday! Thanks!
The high hall of Riverrun had become a living hell.
Walder Frey's head, eyes wide and unseeing, rolled down the steps like a burst leather ball.
It came to rest in a foul puddle of mixed wine and blood.
His cloudy old eyes stared upward, reflecting the flickering candlelight overhead , and the grave he had dug for his own family with his own hands.
Hundreds of Frey soldiers stood frozen where they were, the blades in their hands unable to fall another inch.
They watched the man standing at the high seat casually flick the blood from his ice blade onto the ornate carpet, and felt their souls tremble.
That was not a man.
That was Death itself, walking out of the Lands of Always Winter.
"Father... Father is dead..."
"He killed Lord Frey!"
A trembling voice broke the silence from somewhere in the crowd.
Black Walder Frey.
One of Walder Frey's most ruthless sons.
He stared at his father's headless corpse. Horror flashed across his eyes first , then it was swallowed whole by the madness of a cornered beast.
Surrender?
They had planned this bloody massacre. They had violated the sacred guest right.
And now surrender?
What waited for them would be worse than death. A judgment that would drag on and on. The entire Frey family nailed to history's pillar of shame, their stench lasting for ten thousand years.
Death either way.
"He's only one man! We have hundreds!"
Black Walder drew his longsword. His face, so like his father's in its cruelty, flushed red with fury.
"Kill him! Avenge my father! Fight a bloody path out for House Frey!"
His roar hit the dying embers in every Frey man's chest and set them alight.
Yes.
They still had hundreds of men. Hundreds of sharp swords.
Even if he truly was a devil, they would tear a piece of flesh from him before the end.
"Kill—!"
"For Frey!"
Survival instinct and family honor hit at once. Whatever reason remained was swept away entirely.
The dozens of Frey soldiers closest to Lynn let out beast-like roars, raised their blades, and charged from every direction toward the high seat.
They would drown this devil in a tide of bodies.
Lynn didn't even lift an eyelid.
The nine White Walkers behind him seemed to receive a silent command. They stepped forward in perfect lockstep, not a fraction of a second between them, and walked quietly into the oncoming crowd.
No battle cries. No slogans.
Nine silent black figures. Nine frost-forged longswords that had materialized from nothing, radiating an eerie blue chill.
CLANG!
The first steel sword to strike a White Walker shattered the instant it met the ice blade, as though it had struck ten-thousand-year-old glacial stone. The recoil split the Frey soldier's grip wide open. His sword exploded into fragments.
He didn't have time to scream. The ice sword had already traced a clean arc.
THUD!
A head flew.
From the severed neck, what sprayed out was not hot blood , it was a mist of ice-blue.
That was only the beginning.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
Shattering sounds rang out across the hall in rapid succession. The castle-forged steel that House Frey prided itself on was as fragile as glass against those ice blades. It didn't matter whether you slashed or blocked. The outcome was always the same.
Fragments.
Without dragonglass or Valyrian steel, the White Walkers were simply invincible.
A burly Frey knight tried to block with his heavy kite shield. The White Walker made no fancy moves , just a single, straight thrust.
CRACK!
The iron-studded wooden shield, built to absorb battle-axe blows, was pierced clean through and shattered. Then the thick plate armor beneath it.
The knight looked down at his chest. Disbelief. The last light in his eyes went out fast.
This was a slaughter.
A slaughter without suspense. Without even the grim dignity of a real fight.
Every swing the White Walkers made followed the most efficient principle of killing. No wasted movement. No pointless technique. Only the most precise cuts and the most lethal thrusts.
Their bodies felt nothing. Swords hacked into them and they didn't slow. A battle-axe slammed into one White Walker's shoulder and produced a dull thud , the figure didn't even sway. The axe shattered instead. The knight who had swung it died a heartbeat later, turned on by a single backhand stroke that split him from crown to floor, man and armor together, with inhuman force.
White Walkers could no longer be measured against the peak of human combat.
They were simply beyond reason.
Inside the high hall, screams and shattering steel and cracking bone rose and fell without pause, weaving into the most bloody, most terrifying symphony of death imaginable.
The Frey soldiers who had been roaring about family honor moments ago completely broke.
These were not enemies.
They were killing machines that knew no fatigue, felt no pain, and could not even be stopped by death.
"Devils... they're devils!"
"Run! Run!"
The line collapsed instantly. Frey men threw down their weapons, screaming and wailing, scattering in every direction like headless flies , all of them desperate to put as much distance as possible between themselves and those black-robed reapers.
But the main doors had been locked. Locked by their own hands.
There was nowhere to run.
The entire high hall had become a sealed slaughterhouse.
Lysa Arryn had crumpled to the floor, her whole body shaking violently.
She watched the Frey men who had been fawning over her just minutes ago, swearing oaths and pledging loyalty with such fervor.
Now they were being butchered like animals.
Warm blood splashed across her face. The thick, iron stench turned her stomach.
She did not want to die.
She could not die here.
Her mind went blank. Survival instinct took over. She dropped to her hands and knees and crawled toward the far corner of the hall, away from the slaughter.
She had to live. Whatever it took, she had to live.
She reached a massive stone pillar and pressed herself behind it, thinking she had found a moment's safety.
A pair of black boots appeared in her line of sight.
Lysa looked up slowly, her neck stiff with dread.
A pair of eyes burning with blue light stared back at her.
A White Walker. Standing before her in perfect silence, as though it had always been there. The ice sword in its hand still dripped with ice-blue blood.
"Please... please don't kill me..."
Lysa's last defenses crumbled. She begged in a voice ragged with despair, tears and snot streaking her face.
The White Walker paid no attention to her plea.
It raised its ice sword slowly. The tip leveled at the center of her forehead.
The shadow of death had never been this close, this clear.
It was over.
Everything was over.
Then — just as the icy tip was about to touch her skin.
WHOOSH!
A sound split the air.
A black dagger, spinning with eerie precision, struck the flat of the White Walker's blade.
CLANG!
One sharp crack — and that indestructible ice sword was knocked off course.
Something shifted in those blue eyes. A ripple, barely there, but real.
The White Walker turned its head toward where the dagger had come from.
A black figure had appeared in the shadows of the high hall, at some point, without anyone noticing. He wore a loose black robe, hood pulled low, face hidden. But his movements were faster than the White Walker's. More fluid. More alive.
He didn't pause for a single breath. The dagger had barely left his hand before his body was already a blur, charging straight toward Lysa.
Another White Walker moved to intercept.
The black-robed man flicked his wrist. A handful of black caltrops scattered across the floor. The White Walker stepped on them , not pierced, but the impact locked its movement for one instant.
One instant was all he needed.
He reached Lysa like a wildcat hitting its mark, grabbed her arm, and hauled her upright.
"Come with me."
A familiar voice in her ear.
The White Walker's attack came immediately after. Its ice sword became a blur of deadly blue arcs, cutting off every escape route.
The black-robed man moved as though he had eyes in the back of his head. He pulled Lysa through the storm of blade-light, twisting and pivoting, slipping past each lethal strike by a hair's breadth.
A second dagger had appeared in his free hand , oddly shaped, unlike anything she recognized. Every time it met an ice sword, sparks flew.
He was actually holding his own against these things.
Lysa could barely process it. She let him pull her through the chaos, through the flashing steel and screaming shadows.
BOOM!
He smashed a black clay pot against the floor. A cloud of acrid smoke erupted and swallowed the entire corner, cutting off the White Walker's line of sight entirely.
"Go!"
He stopped fighting and pulled Lysa with him, turning and crashing through a large hanging on the wall.
Behind it was a secret passage , narrow, dark, barely wide enough for one person.
They plunged in. The sounds of killing and screaming were swallowed up behind them almost immediately.
The passage was pitch black. The only light came from a faint glow off the gem set into the hilt of his dagger.
Lysa stumbled through the narrow tunnel, pulled along by his grip, her legs barely keeping up.
Her heart hammered.
She was alive. She had actually escaped.
She didn't know how long they ran. Eventually, a sliver of light appeared ahead.
A hidden door. Leading outside Riverrun.
They burst through it. Cold night air hit her face, carrying the damp smell of the river, and the shock of it cleared her head in an instant.
She gasped, drinking in great lungfuls of fresh air, feeling as though she had crossed back from another world.
"Who... who are you?"
She managed between ragged breaths.
"Why did you save me?"
The black-robed man said nothing.
He turned around and slowly pulled back his hood.
When that face caught the cold, clear moonlight, Lysa Arryn's breath stopped.
It was a face she knew better than almost any other.
Somewhat gaunt. A carefully groomed goatee. A pair of grey-green eyes that always held a shrewd, unreadable light.
Petyr Baelish.
"Petyr?"
Her lips trembled. She couldn't trust her own eyes.
He was dead. She had seen his head herself, back in the Vale , those eyes wide and glassy and gone...
No.
Impossible.
It had been Lynn's deception. It had to be.
Petyr wasn't dead. He was alive. He had been here all along. He had been watching over her from the shadows this entire time.
All the fear, all the despair, all the humiliation she had swallowed , it all crashed loose at once, a flood of wild joy that swept away what little reason she had left.
"Petyr!"
She cried out, half-laughing, half-sobbing, and threw herself into his arms like a bird coming home to its nest, clutching him with everything she had.
"I knew it! I knew you wouldn't die!"
"I knew you would come for me!"
She was barely coherent. She buried her face in the familiar fabric of his robe and wept openly, pouring out every grievance she had carried for days.
Littlefinger's body went slightly rigid.
Then he relaxed.
He raised one hand and patted her gently on the back.
The touch was soft. His eyes were not. They were flat and cold and utterly dead.
Lysa didn't notice.
He lifted his gaze slowly, looking back toward the direction of Riverrun's high hall.
Something moved through those grey-green eyes , a faint, private amusement that belonged to him alone.
Inside the high hall, Lynn stood in the blood and looked at the crashed hanging and the dark passage behind it.
He gave no order to pursue.
There was no need.
Lysa was walking straight into her own disaster.
"Blackfish" Brynden came to his side, his face tight with anxiety.
"Lord Lynn. We can't let Lysa slip away..."
"The enemy was too strong," Lynn said. His voice was even, undisturbed. "My guards couldn't stop him either."
"But don't worry. I will dig Lysa out."
"A stray dog is nothing to fear. The important matters come first."
Brynden nodded, reluctant but accepting.
Compared to the chaos now spreading across the Riverlands, one Lysa was a small thing. He knew where the priorities lay.
Lynn turned around.
He looked at the surviving Frey men kneeling on the ground, trembling, surrendered. The smile on his face was quiet and knowing.
Lysa had to die. That much was settled.
But Lysa was kin to Catelyn, and Catelyn was his mother-in-law. Which meant that no matter what happened, no matter what anyone said — even if Catelyn herself raised both hands and begged him to do it — Lysa could not die by his hand.
Reputation was everything.
He had no interest in giving anyone cause to talk.
But him not acting didn't mean the people around him wouldn't.
And the Petyr he had so carefully crafted would see her off just fine.
➤ Next: The Fleeing Lysa